Public Servants

Our public servants have enslaved their masters. PHILIP KALISH La Mirada

Judge Michael Nash, who presides over the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, has long argued that public access to the court's proceedings would improve its accountability and the accountability of those who appear before it. Last week, he set out to prove it. Nash, along with this page, had supported state legislation that would change the presumption that dependency court hearings, in which the fate of children in foster care is decided, should...

A reader (Letters, Aug. 31) paints a picture that all pension costs are paid by the taxpayers. This is very far from the truth. The employee also pays. This money is paid into the most successful retirement system in the nation, the California State Public Employees' Retirement System. The system, in turn, earns money for the eventual retirement of the public employee. I do not understand what is wrong with the eventual retirement of our public servants. George W. Cox Rancho Cucamonga -- Very large sums of money are deducted monthly from teachers' paychecks and invested for them by the California State Teachers' Retirement System.

The other shoe, this one a stiletto, has dropped. One day after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced he would not vie for the Republican presidential nomination, perhaps the only other Republican with the power to shake up the field announced that she would not run either. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, 47, released a letter to supporters Wednesday telling them that "after much prayer and serious consideration," she had decided not to seek the GOP nomination for 2012. The letter, first posted by ABC News on its website, was later emailed to reporters.

Public servants, take heart: Several key federal legislators are back again with a bill that would make it easier for teachers, policemen and firemen to buy houses in the communities where they work through the Federal Housing Administration. A similar measure passed the House last year but was waylaid in the Senate. This time, though, sponsors believe they will be able to get around the opposition of Sen.

The Times has printed an excellent series of articles on pay and salary levels in Orange County city/county governments. The article on Aug. 24 ("25 City Workers Earn $126,000 or More Each in '94") concerning Huntington Beach city employees was frightening for the way in which an "easy money" attitude seems to prevail at all levels of city employment there. In your Sept. 19 front-page article ("200 Employees of O.C. Earn $100,000-Plus"), it seems there is a similar lack of checks and balances (toward overtime)

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone received a $27,700 bonus, one of the $11.5 billion in year-end bonuses paid to 4.75 million public servants today, officials said. Nakasone, whose regular yearly salary is $137,000, received the largest bonus alloted to members of both houses of Japan's parliament, called the Diet.

Public servants have received such poor notices lately that I thought it might be of interest to hear some news to the contrary about a fireman and a Highway Patrol officer. On Christmas Eve, at 4:45 p.m., on a jammed Santa Ana Freeway near Norwalk, our car "died"--and would not start again. We were about 100 feet from an off-ramp--100 feet across four treacherous freeway lanes! Within minutes, a fireman in civilian clothes, driving his own vehicle, apparently on his way to a family reunion, pulled up behind us. Once he determined our problem, he called the Highway Patrol from his car. Then he placed flares in the lane behind us for 50 yards or so. And before he left, he gave us additional flares, complete with instructions on how to use them.

A suicide bomber with explosives packed into his turban killed the mayor of Kandahar on Wednesday -- the latest in a wave of assassinations that claimed the life of President Hamid Karzai's half-brother earlier this month. The assailant apparently mingled with a crowd of constituents meeting Mayor Ghulam Hamidi, who had lived in the United States for years before returning to Afghanistan and taking up his dangerous post. The blast killed at least one other person, a provincial spokesman said.

R. Sargent Shriver, a lawyer who served as the social conscience of two administrations, launching the Peace Corps for his brother-in-law, President Kennedy, and leading the "war on poverty" for President Johnson, has died. He was 95. Shriver died Tuesday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., his family said in a statement. His health had been in decline since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003. His illness moved his daughter, California's then-First Lady Maria Shriver, to testify before Congress in 2009 about the disease's "terrifying" reality.

A strike by 1.3 million South African public servants threatened Thursday to drag on for a third week as unions signaled that they would reject the government's latest compromise offer, a wage hike that would be more than double the rate of inflation. Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary-general of the main trade union federation, COSATU, said his organization had rejected the offer but that talks continued. Unions representing nurses, health and education workers, and police also said they would reject the offer, and other unions said they would follow suit in the coming days.

This has been Southern California's summer of secrecy. The "leaders" — and we use that term advisedly — of Bell showed that by concealing their actions from the public, they could put together some fat paychecks. The representatives of United Teachers Los Angeles balked when The Times published data daring to suggest that teachers be held accountable for the performance of their students. A judge tried to control her courtroom by restraining the news media — in violation of rudimentary constitutional law. The union representing sheriff's deputies fought to keep the names of officers involved in shootings private.

Recently, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger again raised the term-limits debate, calling term limits "crazy." The governor made his remarks in San Francisco at a speech after he was introduced by former state Sen. Jack Scott. Schwarzenegger said: "I actually miss him now that he's not there, but I know he was termed out because we have these crazy term limits here in California and people that are that experienced like him then have to leave and move on." The only thing that's crazy is thinking that out of 36.7 million people, only the elite political class of individuals are "experienced" enough to hold public office.

Re: David Lazarus' consumer column "Getting around credit card reform," July 8: If the so-called public servants who are otherwise known as senators and representatives had truly done their duty, the law they enacted would have been effective immediately -- not over a period of time. Obviously the public servants were mindful to protect a major source of reelection funding, and the occupant of the White House certainly saw the wisdom of that action. You get what you pay for! Bennett Cane Orange

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday said his government was making strides against corruption but warned that graft remained a threat to the nation's efforts against crime. Calderon, speaking on International Anti-Corruption Day, said 11,500 public servants had been sanctioned for corruption since he took office in December 2006. Fines against them totaled more than $300 million, he said.

A reader (Letters, Aug. 31) paints a picture that all pension costs are paid by the taxpayers. This is very far from the truth. The employee also pays. This money is paid into the most successful retirement system in the nation, the California State Public Employees' Retirement System. The system, in turn, earns money for the eventual retirement of the public employee. I do not understand what is wrong with the eventual retirement of our public servants. George W. Cox Rancho Cucamonga -- Very large sums of money are deducted monthly from teachers' paychecks and invested for them by the California State Teachers' Retirement System.